


Welcome to My Horror Show

by Star_Going_Supernova



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Body Horror, Dark, Descriptions of gore, Gen, Horror, Mutilation, Off-Screen Mentioned Deaths, but because I'm me there's an, but i kinda want to continue exploring this concept, casual mentions of murder, holy frick it's dark, my gosh there's so much horror, optional happy ending, this is everything gone very very wrong, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: Henry made it only a few steps into the studio before knowing that something was wrong.Or; a version of events very different from the ones we’re familiar with, without being all that different at all. Welcome to the horror show.





	1. Welcome to My Horror Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one seriously deviates from my normal Fluff and Hugs and all that. I don’t know exactly where this came from, but for goodness sake, heed the warnings. This is not a happy story. 
> 
> The title is from [Horror Show, by Komodo Chords](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2igKf1O0FE), which is an amazing song.

Henry took two steps into the studio and froze. Only a few of the lights were on, leaving the studio dimly lit and shadow-filled. The floor and walls— at least, those he could see from the entrance— looked trashed. Ink was splattered across every surface, thick trails crossing the boards here and there. 

“Joey?” he called, letting the door thunk shut behind him. Henry moved further inside, taking in the desolate and strangely abandoned appearance of his workplace with confusion. 

He’d only been gone a few days, taking time off for a friend’s wedding. How could the studio have reached this state in such a short amount of time? Entering one of the main rooms, he turned in a circle, bewildered. There was no one in sight, despite this being one of the most frequented areas in the entire building. 

“Joey?” Henry tried again. His friend had known he’d be returning today at this time, and Joey had promised he’d be there to welcome him back. Besides, the parking lot was still as full as it ever was. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny!” 

The deeper he went, the worse things looked. An entire room was flooded with ink, several doorways were haphazardly blocked with wooden boards that Henry was sure had been randomly pried from the walls and ceiling, and broken tables and chairs littered the area. As he wandered, the still working lights above him flickered and sparked. Out of sight, pipes creaked and groaned.

Everywhere he went, there was no one. Not in any of the individual offices, not in the staff lounges, not in the screening rooms. Henry repeatedly called out his friends’ names, hoping for an answer.

But there was only that eerie silence, the building’s ambient sounds all he could hear. 

He sloshed through another flooded room, no longer caring about the state of his pants and shoes. He just wanted to find out what was going on.  
  
“Joey! This isn’t funny!” 

Henry jumped slightly at the crash of wood against wood behind him. He whipped around, only to see a board laying in the middle of the intersection he’d just passed through. Beyond, down the hallway opposite him, appeared to be a person in a room with a dim, almost golden glow— like that of candles. 

Stepping forward, Henry called out, “Hello?”

He didn’t get a response. Things had felt strange before, but now, as he slowly approached, a heavy weight formed in his chest. This whole experience had gone past unusual, right into downright wrong. 

“Joey? Is that you?” 

It was. But just as Henry realized that Joey’s head was tilted limply— and that he wasn’t standing at all, but propped up on a slightly angled table— he got close enough to see the bloody, gaping hole of his friend’s chest. It looked like something had exploded out of him, sending chunks of viscera and a spray of blood in all directions, ribs snapped out to form a jagged frame of bone around the empty chasm. 

Henry’s hand raised, shaking slightly, to cover his mouth and nose. The stench of blood became unbearable, and his eyes tracked the way it had cascaded out of Joey’s body like a waterfall, drenching his front before cooling into a rust-brown. 

Joey’s body was strapped down, at the neck, waist, and knees, the exposed skin across his throat rubbed raw. He’d struggled. 

Coming to a stop at the threshold, something in the corner of Henry’s eye caught his attention, and he turned his head to the right. 

**_WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?_ **

The terrifying message was scrawled across the wall next to Joey’s body in a mixture of blood and ink, either by a tool of some sort or an impossibly large finger. 

He looked back at his friend. Joey’s eyes were frozen open, his jaw hanging, clearly broken. Ink dripped from his mouth, darkening his lips and chin, especially against his pale-dead skin. 

Dead. He… Joey was actually dead. Henry’s best friend was _dead_. 

That thought drove into Henry’s heart and mind, and he stumbled out of the room to escape the horrific gore— it looked like a murder had happened in there, and he nearly vomited at the realization that _one had_. 

What happened here while he was gone? Where were the others? Were they all— were they all dead too?

He stopped at the T-junction with the fallen board, bracing one hand against the wall as he hunched over, trying to calm down. His thoughts were jumbled, confused, he didn’t understand— what nightmare had he walked into? 

Ahead of him, the floor creaked, quiet and long, like a great weight being slowly pressed onto the aged wood. Henry’s head snapped up. 

That was impossible.

Not ten feet away from him, a Bendy cutout stood in the center of the hallway, where he himself had been walking just minutes before. 

There was someone in here with him.

He didn’t hesitate. Pushing off the wall, Henry took off back the way he’d come, towards the exit. If he could just get out of here and find a phone, he could call the police—

A previously open doorway that was now boarded up forced him to skid to a stop. Whoever was in here was trying to trap him. But Henry wouldn’t give up; he knew the studio as well as his own home.

He dodged broken chairs as he passed through several connecting rooms that would take him back to the front of the studio. Or at least, if there hadn’t been a massive heap of ruined furniture in the middle of a corridor. 

Backtracking, Henry ducked into a screening room. There was a decently sized crawlspace in the ceiling connected to this particular one that he could use to get passed the blockage. Halfway through the mess of chairs, the projector clicked on. 

Henry whirled to face the projectionist’s seat, but there was no one there. The light from the animation playing behind him cast a massive shadow of his tense body against the wall, darkening the far corners. 

The music started playing, and Henry instinctively turned back to the screen. He squinted and leaned forward. That… that wasn’t right.

It was a sequence simple in concept but complex in design— one of his personal favorites, actually— where Bendy walked down a street holding lyric cards that he’d toss up to flutter away behind him as the music played. The rolling sidewalk and front-facing perspective had been fun for Henry, to the point where his animators had taken some of his other scenes so he could do the whole clip himself.

And now, he watched as the sidewalk rolled, as the cards flashed the lyrics before fading into the background, as the many minor characters he’d painstakingly drawn poked out of building windows and doors to wave as Bendy walked by— but he didn’t watch as Bendy moved to the beat and moved his smiling mouth as best he could along with the words. 

Because Bendy wasn’t in the animation. There was a perfect Bendy-sized hole in the artwork, as though he’d just up and walked off the screen. 

A quiet splash reached his ears, just barely audible over the music, and before he could do much more than wonder what could be _splashing_ in the studio, Henry’s eyes widened as he felt a presence loom up behind him. 

Tense enough to snap like a twig, Henry slowly turned around and tilted his head back to compensate for the frightening height difference between himself and—

And he wasn’t quite sure who— or even _what_ — he was looking at. 

It was human shaped, in that there were two distinguishable arms and legs, and a torso, and a head. But the proportions were off, exaggerated like… like a cartoon. And the head was very much a distorted version of Bendy’s, but as if Henry had gone and spilled ink all over his face and drawn his horns with his eyes closed. 

A floppy white bowtie sagged down its chest, caught in the black, tar-like substance that made up its body. 

 _Not tar,_ Henry corrected himself. _Ink_. 

This… _creature_ , truly appeared to be made of ink. 

It wasn’t Bendy’s real smile that it looked down at him with. The grin stretched too wide and had a disturbingly frozen and plastic-y impression to it. 

Heart unsure if it wanted to speed up or stop entirely, Henry stumbled backwards, tripping over the row of chairs behind him in the process. He barely managed to catch himself. 

The light of the projector briefly blinded him, and a thought— a crazy, impossible thought— occurred to him: Bendy in the animation was missing, somehow, and there was a creature that admittedly bore a resemblance to Bendy standing in front of him. 

Partially crouched, ready to run if necessary, Henry asked, “Bendy?”

This seemed to make the creature happy, and Henry watched as the edges of its fake smile softened into something more genuine. It— _he_ — took a step towards him and nodded. 

“You’re… you’re really Bendy?” Henry gestured behind him at the looping animation. “This Bendy? My Bendy?”

With something like a sigh, Bendy’s lanky body seemed to sag, his smile almost dopey. A strange noise came out of his mouth, his teeth separating the barest bit to allow it through. Henry might’ve passed it off as a random grumble if it weren’t for the deliberate intonation in what he was sure were syllables. 

Henry inched forward. “Are you trying to say something?”

Bendy nodded again and reached out with a wildly oversized hand, slowly enough for Henry to move away if he wanted to. He stayed still, waiting to see what Bendy would do.

His inky finger gently pressed into Henry’s shirt above his heart. In a broken, unused voice, he said, “Creator.” 

“Creator,” Henry repeated. “You mean me?” 

“Our Creator. Ours.” 

“Ours? Are— are there more of you?” 

“Yes.” 

Henry glanced past Bendy as though he’d see more living toons, and was abruptly reminded of what was going on. The excitement that’d been building in him— confused and bewildered, yes, but still excitement; how could he not have been excited to see a character of his own creation standing alive before him?— fizzled out. 

“That’s great, bud, really it is, but look— I don’t know what’s going on here, but someone killed my friend and I don’t know where anyone else is.” Henry moved around Bendy towards the door. “I think whoever did it must still be in here, so I really need to leave—”

“No.”

He glanced back. “What?”

“No,” Bendy repeated. “You can’t leave.” 

Taking a deep breath, Henry fully stopped and turned to face Bendy. “I don’t want to leave, trust me. But I have to. It’s dangerous if I stay, whoever killed Joey might hurt me—”

Bendy snarled, cutting him off with a little gasp. The massive toon lunged forward, at the same time Henry tried to trip away, his back thudding against the wall. Only a moment later, Bendy slammed to a halt in front of him, caging him in, hunched over him with his hands— each easily bigger than Henry’s face— splintering the wood on either side of Henry’s head. 

“No one can hurt you!” he ground out around the continuous, deep growl rumbling in his throat. “No one hurts our Creator. You can’t leave again.” 

Wide-eyed, Henry didn’t respond. He was too busy staying as still as possible. The height difference had been obvious from his first look at Bendy, but he was really feeling it now, with Bendy deliberately looming over him like this. 

“You left,” Bendy said quietly, calmer. 

Did he mean how Henry had taken the last few days off? He hadn’t even been gone a week. 

“You won’t leave again,” Bendy continued. “We practiced.” 

Hesitating only slightly, Henry asked, “Practiced what?” 

Bendy’s hands drifted down to gently curl around Henry’s upper arms. 

“Our Creator should be perfect. So we practiced to make you like us.”

When Henry tried to pull away, Bendy’s fingers tightened. 

A pit formed in his stomach, and he had to force himself to speak. On some level, Henry already knew the answer, but he had to ask anyway. “What happened to Joey… it was you, wasn’t it?”

Grin spreading wider, Bendy said, “Practice. They were _all_ practice.” 

Henry strained against the toon’s iron grip. “Let go of me.” 

Pulling him away from the wall, Bendy chuckled. “Oh, Creator— we’ll never let go.” He dragged Henry after him as he left the room, though he didn’t go far before spinning around to face the struggling human. In one swift movement, he hefted Henry over his shoulder, leaving one hand pressing down on his back, the other trapping Henry’s legs. 

The slightly malleable ink softened the impact of his stomach against Bendy’s body, but Henry was breathing heavily anyway. He tried to kick out, tried to push himself up, tried yelling to be put down, left alone, _please_ , but Bendy didn’t so much as flinch at his efforts. 

Henry twisted around as much as could, his hands sinking slightly into Bendy’s back. Craning his neck, he saw a section of corridor that Bendy was about to pass where the wall was peeled open, exposing the inner workings, some of which included broken piping. 

Bendy’s long stride gave Henry a horrifically short amount of time to try to grab something, but he succeeded in wrenching a decent length of metal tubing off. Without hesitation, he drove the jagged end into the back of Bendy’s neck. Releasing a pained screech, the toon recoiled, loosening his grip on Henry just long enough for him to squirm free. 

Something cracked ominously in his ankle as he landed wrong, but he gritted his teeth and took off at a sprint. Mere seconds into his escape, pounding footsteps followed after him. Henry whipped around a corner, his shoulder briefly smashing into the wall from his frantic momentum. 

He was going deeper into the studio, he realized. But that was better than being caught. 

Shoving open the stairwell door, he leapt down the short flight of stairs to the landing, only to twist around and repeat the action down to the next floor entirely. His ankle screamed in protest, but he didn’t let it slow him down. He heard Bendy crash through the door just as he burst out of his own. 

The music department was as equally destroyed as the first floor. Without pausing to take it all in— much as he wanted to— Henry charged into the band room. He played a quick tune on the piano in the far corner, glad beyond measure he knew about Sammy’s private little hideaway, and slid beneath the raising door before it could go up more than a few feet. Dropping his pipe, he grabbed the bottom and yanked it back down. 

Silence. 

Henry grabbed his throbbing ankle as he waited with his back against the wall beside the door. The room wasn’t very large, nothing more than a long rectangle with a desk and chair at the end, and a few shelves here and there. Sammy had decked the place out as best as he’d been able, and one of the reasons Henry knew about it at all was because the grumpy music director had trusted him enough to bring food or come get him in an emergency.

Sammy. Was he dead too?

A long shriek from almost right outside the secret room’s door nearly startled Henry into bumping it with his elbow. Eyes squeezed shut, he listened to Bendy stomp around. 

“Creator,” Bendy rasped. His breathing, growing ever closer, sounded gravelly and rough in a way it hadn’t before. “You don’t need to be afraid. We practiced so much and on so many—” Bendy laughed hysterically, and Henry hunched closer into himself— “it won’t hurt you! We’d never hurt you.”

The door rattled. Henry clapped his hand over his mouth. 

“Creator…”

Glass shattered— the sound booth window, Henry guessed— and Bendy howled in fury.  
  
“Where are you, Creator?” he cried. “You can’t hide from us forever! You are ours, and we will have you!”

His speech was getting progressively more complex, Henry realized. His first sentences had been short and mildly choppy, but now they sounded less artificial. Did it mean something? Or was it just a product of being alive for longer and longer? 

“You can’t escape,” Bendy said, his voice and footsteps slowly growing fainter. “We won’t let you. We’ll never let you leave us again.” 

Silence. 

Henry scooted away from the door, keeping pressure off of his injured ankle. He was safe, for now. Looking down at his hands, he watched them tremble. Bile rose up in his throat, and it was only the question of whether or not anyone would be able to hear him from out there that kept him from retching violently. 

Joey was dead, Bendy— and others, from the sounds of it— were alive, they had killed not only Joey but everyone that had been in the studio, and now they wanted to do something to Henry that supposedly wouldn’t hurt him because _they had practiced_. 

Swallowing a handful of sobs, Henry curled into a ball right there on the floor, burying his face between his drawn-up knees, and tried, for the next hour or so, to convince himself that this was only a nightmare.

He wasn’t very convincing. 

• • • • •

Sometime later, Henry startled awake. Momentarily disoriented, it took him a long moment to figure out where he was and why he was there. It all came rushing back in a stomach-turning ball of horror and fear. 

Even worse, he hadn’t come out of his fitful sleep peacefully; something had woken him up. But what? 

There was a deliberate _tap-tap-tap_ on the door to the hideaway, and the little noise caused shivers to run up and down Henry’s spine, nearly paralyzing him in place. 

“Sheep, sheep, sheep,” a strangely muffled voice called through the barrier. “Are you in there, little sheep?” 

Only a moment later, to Henry’s utter terror, the sounds of the piano tune passcode played, and the door rumbled upwards. 

Bendy had been right: there was no true escape here. 

Just outside his borrowed sanctuary, an unfamiliar figure stood looking straight at him. The stranger was smaller than Bendy, much more human-sized, and not just in terms of height. The proportions matched that of a human, not a toon, and if it weren’t for the bubbling ink that made up their body, Henry would’ve happy to see them. 

Bendy’s face stared at him, the proper toon one. While Henry’s mind was quick to recognize that it was merely a cardboard cutout likeness, his heart seemed to have missed the memo, and was once more entering overdrive. 

“There you are!” the inky person said, sounding downright delighted. 

Without the door separating them, Henry’s eyes widened at the voice. It was still slightly off, a sort of wet, echoey tone to it that didn’t belong, but it was undeniably Sammy Lawrence. 

“Sammy?” Henry asked, his voice hoarse. “Is that— is that really you?” 

The Bendy mask tilted at him, a hole punched through the mouth. There was only darkness beyond the splintered edges, no flash of white teeth or a pink tongue. 

“Of course it’s me,” Sammy said, stepping closer. 

Henry pushed himself up with the help of the wall, the shoulder he’d smashed earlier stiff, his ankle still sensitive. “What happened to you, Sammy? Why do you look like that?” 

Sammy threw his arms out.  “I was blessed,” he cried reverently, “by our lord!” 

Oh, no. Please, no no no. Henry swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Who’s your lord?”

Too fast for Henry to react to, especially injured, Sammy lunged forward and grabbed his shoulders, though he never spoke with anything other than sheer excitement. “The Ink Demon, of course. And how lucky you are, for our lord is searching for you, dear Creator!”

Hoping for answers, if not an eventual chance to escape, Henry nodded slowly. “Do you think you could tell me why he’s looking for me?” 

“To set you free; to save you from your weak, mortal body.”  
  
“But why me, Sammy?”

The expressionless mask tilted. “Because you’re the Creator.”

“We were all creators, though. You and me and Joey, all the animators, the band, the voice actors— but Bendy killed Joey, and he did this to you, and who knows what happened to the others.” 

Sammy was silent a moment, and then his fingers tightened over Henry’s shoulders. “You doubt him,” he said quietly. “You doubt our lord.” 

Desperate for Sammy to understand, Henry leaned forward. “He hurt you. Doesn’t that mean something to you?” 

Dropping his hands to encircle Henry’s wrists, Sammy stepped backwards, tugging Henry after him. “Well if that’s all you’re worried about— I know he hurt me, Creator. He had to, for your sake. Nothing less than perfection could be used on you, and sacrifices must be made.”

Despite Henry’s protests, Sammy pulled him out of the hidden sanctuary and across the band room. Like with Bendy, his struggles didn’t even phase Sammy, and he was unable to stop his captor from dragging him through the doorway and towards a different hall across the music department. 

A hundred different thoughts— all centered around getting away— flashed through Henry’s mind. There was no telling where Sammy was taking him, and he knew deep in his bones that if Bendy got his hands on him again, that’d be it. He had to escape now. 

It was the oldest trick in the book— and Henry knew a lot of tricks, being a cartoon animator— but Sammy seemed just off his rocker enough to believe it.

He looked over Sammy’s shoulder and gasped. “Bendy!” 

Sammy whirled with a joyous cry of, “My lord!” 

And Henry lunged in a different direction, heading down the corridor opposite the one Sammy had been aiming for. He ignored the sounds of dismay coming from behind him as he slammed through a series of doors, trying to randomize his path as much as possible. 

Stumbling through puddles of ink, Henry contorted himself through some odd spaces left by boards criss-crossing the walls here and there. He refused to backtrack, as that was arguably what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. 

Henry eventually paused and clamped a hand over his mouth to smother his rough breathing in order to listen. It didn’t sound like anyone was following him. 

A sudden, enraged shriek sent his heart racing. He twisted around in a circle, but there was no one else in this particular hall. It was only when a violent crash resounded nearby that he realized there was someone in one of the rooms. Of course, a doorknob just a few down on his left jiggled, and it was all Henry could do to silently get out of the open. 

It was pitch black inside the room he’d randomly chosen, so Henry kept the slightest sliver of a crack between the door and the wall. 

“How could he have escaped _twice?”_ a voice Henry half-recognized all but screamed. 

If someone answered her, Henry couldn’t hear them, but the voice continued a moment later, “I don’t care about any of that, just _find him!_ We can’t let him leave us again, the Creator can’t be allowed to escape!”

Oh, not this again. He was only gone four days! As much as Henry wanted to explain that all to everyone currently hunting him down, he got the feeling knowing all that wouldn’t really change anything. And besides, they’d still gone and done horrific things to the studio’s employees. Nothing could make that better. 

Henry continued to peek through the crack as the woman snarled, “Go find him, you little freaks!” 

Multiple footsteps echoed through the corridor, two heading in the opposite direction and one coming closer to Henry. 

A toon entered his narrow field of vision, and Henry nearly gasped aloud. Worse even than Sammy being made of ink, this toon’s head was completely disconnected from his body, swinging from a pole that had been jammed into where his neck ought to have been. Between that and the utter mutilation of the toon’s face, it took Henry a long moment to recognize Barley from the Butcher gang. 

Someone else followed after him, the clicking of heels leading Henry to guess that this was the speaker. 

It was Alice, he knew that the instant he saw the white bow on the front of her dress. But she was just as far off-model as Bendy had been. She was human sized, and ink seemed to be leaking from her neck, as well as coating her hands and arms like a long pair of gloves. Her halo was jammed halfway into her skull, and there was something deeply, horribly wrong with her face. 

Henry squinted. Or maybe— just half her face? The one side had jagged rips in her cheek and an empty eye socket and strange bumps beneath her horn, but the other side looked smooth and perfect. It was almost like a mask—

Alice turned a little, and the light fell on her intact features. Henry nearly toppled over backwards, eyes wide. 

That was— that was _Susie’s face_. Alice was wearing the flesh of her voice actor’s face, stretched over the deformities of her own.

She said something else to Barley, but it was lost on Henry. All he could hear was static, until Alice sent Barely off, calling him by name. Only, she didn’t say Barley. 

Alice called him Thomas. 

Henry must’ve made a noise at that, because even as Thomas— good old Thomas, who was often too sarcastic for his own good, but who cared about his fellow employees far more than he’d ever admit— limped off, Alice’s head snapped to stare right at Henry. 

He lunged backwards into the dark, praying she hadn’t actually seen him. 

_Click… Click… Click_

She took slow steps closer, the floorboards creaking beneath her feet. The halo of light around the door darkened, blocked by her body. 

Henry’s back collided with something, a strangely shaped table from the feel of it. There was nowhere else to go.

On silent hinges, the door began to swing open. 

Lightheaded from holding his breath, Henry wondered if he’d be lucky enough to fall unconscious before whatever they planned to do to him. 

A screech from farther away stopped Alice in her tracks. He heard her move back a bit as she grumbled. 

“Oh, what is it now?” she said under her breath. 

The screech repeated, grating and loud and filled with what Henry could only describe as anguish. 

With a frustrated huff, Alice stormed off. Henry waited in silence for long minutes, but he didn’t hear anything beyond the partially open door. He stood, intending to keep moving, but his legs gave out from a combination of fear and stress and his ankle. Still in shock— from learning that another of his friends had suffered at the toons’ hands, from seeing Susie’s face layered over Alice’s, from nearly being discovered— Henry wasn’t able to catch himself as he fell backwards against the strange table.

Only it wasn’t a table, he discovered. His flailing arms pressed down on the smooth keys of the music department’s organ, creating a cacophony of jarring sounds. 

He shifted his grip on the instrument and let his head fall back to stare up at the dark ceiling. _I just can’t catch any breaks today_ , he thought, so very tired. 

The racket died down relatively quickly, leaving Henry in silence once more. Until, right behind his head, almost directly in his ear, he heard a muffled moan come from _inside the organ_. 

Henry lurched forward in a panic, stumbling as he turned around to ensure that there wasn’t actually someone else in the room with him— an idea that hadn’t even occurred to him when he first took refuge here.

And there, in the slightest bit of light leaking in from the hallway, he could swear he saw a human eye blink at him from between two of the pipes. It was right where he knew his head had been.

Without wasting another second, Henry spun and took off. 

• • • • •

Henry wasn’t sure where he ended up after that. All he’d been able to focus on was running, just… running away. As fast as he could, as far as he could before his body gave out on him. 

Now, he really wished he’d been more careful of where he’d ended up. He was hidden behind some crates in one of the studio’s numerous staff lounges watching a creature trudge across the room in front of him.

Like Sammy, this one had a body made of ink, not that of a stylized toon’s. Instead of a mask, though, it had a projector for a head. Tubes and wires poked out of the back to connect with the creature’s arms and shoulders. A film reel was embedded in its shoulder. Its steps were heavy, clunking against the wooden floorboards.

That sound was the only reason Henry had been able to hide before being discovered. He watched it come closer, navigating the tables and chairs in a way that told Henry it could actually see somehow, though it didn’t seem otherwise aware of its surroundings. 

It paused not far from Henry, an animation playing through its projector lens. The more Henry stared at it, the more unsettled he became. It took a moment for him to realize why— the ink of this creature’s shoulders wasn't entirely black. 

It was red, too. 

Even as the realization choked Henry, he watched as bright, shiny brain-viscera dripped from the hole connecting the projector to the neck. Tufts of hair were caught on the bloody rim, he saw, along with what had to be actual bits of skin, entire flaps like it had been peeled off from the face of this unfortunate soul. 

A very very bad feeling made Henry wonder if he was looking at the remains of Norman Polk, fittingly, the studio’s main projectionist. 

It was a long time after Norman left that Henry felt able to stand. He left only one piece of evidence that he’d ever been in that room: the sickness from his stomach that he’d finally been unable to simply swallow back down.

Passing through a different door than the one Norman had used, Henry entered the only part of the studio that even remotely resembled a cubicle farm. The different stations were trashed, chairs broken, tools and papers strewn about the room, and the ever-present ink splatters littering ever surface. 

Henry made it about halfway through the room before something on the wall caught his attention. It was an animation, one he knew didn’t belong to the studio. Front and center on the screen, Wally hung from cables at his wrists, ankles, and neck— like a puppet. They didn’t merely wrap around his limbs, but instead seemed to be sewn into his flesh. 

Whoever was controlling him was off-screen, but the lines jerked him around, unnatural and stiff. In the background, several other employees hung in similar states, with minor modifications made to their persons. Some of their eyes were gouged, others X-ed out. At least one was missing their head, and another’s fingers were stitched together. 

Henry wiped his blurry, tear-filled eyes. It just seemed to get worse and worse the further in he went. By comparison, it seemed like poor Joey had suffered the least of everyone, for all that his chest had been brutally ripped open. 

“We didn’t like hurting them.” 

Henry spun around so fast, he nearly knocked himself off his own two feet. He crashed backwards into a desk, scattering a selection of bottles across the surface. 

Mere yards away, evidently having entered through the same doorway Henry had used, was Boris. Unlike Bendy and Alice, or any other living creature he’d seen since returning, Boris appeared to be on-model, just larger. Though not as tall as Bendy, he had to have stood at least a foot and a half, maybe two, over Henry. 

“What?” Henry asked, voice cracking. Gosh, he could still remember the first time he’d drawn these characters, and he hated that some part of him thought it was the absolute coolest to see them alive in front of him.

Boris nodded back at the looping animation. “We didn’t like hurting them,” he repeated. “But we had to. See, if we messed up on them, there were plenty more to use. But there’s only one of you. We can’t afford to get it wrong for you.” 

Henry shook his head, knowing that everything about him was shaking violently. “But why?” he asked, desperate to know. Was he technically to blame for this entire massacre? “Why hurt them at all? I didn’t leave for good, and any of them would’ve told you that.” He quickly glanced over his shoulder, and when he turned back, Boris was closer.

The toon shrugged. “It didn’t matter if you were coming back. All that mattered was that you could leave at all.” He tilted his head at Henry.

There was something so lifeless about Boris. Bendy and Alice— heck, even Sammy and Norman— had seemed so alive, in their movements and voices. Boris was expressionless, his voice monotone. He seemed like as much of an inanimate puppet as Wally in the cartoon scene. 

“Y’know,” Boris said, “you’re hurting us now, by resisting us, by running away. Especially Bendy. We just want to help you, Creator. Why won’t you let us help you?” 

Henry blinked, and suddenly, Boris was right in front of him, face monstrous and torn and fanged, reaching for his neck. 

Yelping, Henry thrust the bottle he’d been subtly working on opening in the remaining space between them. “Get away from me,” he said, making sure Boris could see the label reading _acetone_. 

The toon froze with a growl. “How long do you expect that to work?” he asked around his mouthful of fangs. Honestly, there were so many, they’d look better in a shark’s mouth, or any number of deep sea creatures that deserved fear and respect. “Even if you do use it, you’ll run out. Why can’t you just accept the inevitable?” 

Henry didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Is there anyone in this studio still alive and well, or did you kill or mutilate all of them?” 

Boris leaned towards Henry and licked his chops. “Practice makes perfect,” he whispered. “We put them all to good use.”

Making sure he never turned his back to the toon, Henry maneuvered towards the door, brandishing the acetone all the while. Boris watched him, his face remaining grotesque and horrific. Henry couldn’t help but wonder why the three original toons were so off-model. 

Behind his back, Henry’s hand found the doorknob. He twisted it. 

Across the room and safely out of range, Boris threw back his head and howled. Almost immediately, ink bubbled out of the wall behind him, covering a rectangular section, just the right size for an ink demon to walk through, summoned by his good buddy.

Of course, Henry didn’t wait around to see it happen. The moment the ink appeared, he took off, his ankle hindering him more and more with every burst of running. With Boris and Bendy in that room, this might be his best chance at getting back to the first floor, and hopefully, to the exit. 

He wasn’t exactly quiet in his limping sprint to the nearest stairwell, and by the time he shoved the door open, he could hear several pursuers on his tail. The bottle of acetone was already mostly empty, and honestly probably wouldn’t have done much good against Boris. Now, Henry doused the handle, hoping it would at least slow them down. He made sure it latched shut before leaping up the stairs as fast as he could. 

From below, a screech tore through the air. Henry didn’t stop.

Somehow, he managed to make it to the main room that led directly to an exit. His ankle rolled terribly halfway across, sending him crashing to the ground. He panted heavily; he was so close. 

“Creator.” 

Henry twisted around, fear gripping his heart. 

At the far wall, Bendy stood, ink bubbling behind him as his sneaky little portal slowly faded away. 

They stared at each other. The rest of the studio was utterly silent. 

“Creator, _please_ ,” Bendy said, inching forward. He sounded so sad and desperate, that Henry _almost_ felt bad for wanting to leave. Almost, but not quite. “Let us save you.”

“I think you and I have very different definitions of what _save_ means,” Henry responded, scooting back on his butt. Dignity had no place in a horror show like this. “You’d kill me before any saving could be done.” 

Bendy whined wordlessly, fidgeting with his oversized gloved hands. 

 _He’s kind of like a child_ , Henry thought. _Y’know, like one of those children in the movies where everyone dies because the kid doesn’t know any better_. 

With a larger step forward, Bendy implored Henry, “Please, we just want to make you like us. It’ll be wonderful. You’ll get to stay, and nothing will ever hurt you again. You’ll be ours.”

“Look at yourself, Bendy. At Alice, at Boris. None of you are— it can’t be comfortable, being like that,” Henry said, shaking his head.

“We’re incomplete, yes,” Bendy admitted. “But it’ll be okay once you’re with us. You’re all we’re missing.” 

Henry’s ankle sent a sharp pain shooting up his leg. He had to stall for time and hope that it would calm down enough within the next few minutes that he’d be able to run. There was no way this wouldn’t end without one last chase, the end-all-be-all, double or nothing. “I still don’t even know what you want to do to me.”

“Make you like us,” Bendy repeated. “Made of ink, but perfect— you’re ours, you’ve always been ours, and this way, it’d be like that forever. Would that be so bad?”

On some level, no, it wouldn’t. But they’d murdered people, left others suffering and in pain, mutilated beyond repair. And Henry wouldn’t stand for that. 

“I’m sorry, Bendy,” he said. There wasn’t much else to say, really. 

Bendy seemed to realize exactly what Henry was apologizing for, as he lunged forward even as Henry twisted to his his feet and ran. 

He was so close. 

At the same time, Henry and Bendy each reached out, one for the exit’s doorknob, the other for his Creator’s shirt. 

His hand made contact. _Finally_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But whose hand was it? I’ve left that up to you, dear reader, to decide. 
> 
> Now, this _is_ an ending, but for anyone who would prefer a happier ending, continue on to the next chapter. Or give that a try and choose which one you like better for yourself. Either way, please let me know what you thought about this one. :)
> 
>  **EDIT:** There's now a sequel to the Bad End of this story, where Bendy catches Henry: [There's No Escape](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13300347)


	2. Welcome to the Rest of Your Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a very short, totally optional happy ending from that first chapter. You can decide which you want to believe.

“And _that’s_ why you should let me make the Ink Machine so we can bring the toons to life ourselves instead of suffering through all that.” Joey beamed proudly.

Henry, face buried in his hands, asked, “You put me through that whole story in the hopes that it would convince me to give you your blueprints and magick books back?”

“Yes,” Joey said. “Did it work?”

“Well… I’ll be honest, I know what I’m doing for next year’s Halloween special— but other than that,” Henry sat up, “I’m officially grounding you in advance for the rest of the week for the nightmares I’m probably going to have tonight."  
  
“Aw, Henry! But—”

“No buts,” Henry said, rising from his seat. He ignored the pout on Joey’s face as he left his friend’s office to return to his own. Collapsing into his chair, he released a long breath. 

“Well? What’d he want?”

Henry turned to his desk, where Bendy peeked out from over the back of the couch in the living room scene he’d drawn weeks ago. After a moment, Boris and Alice’s heads popped up on either side of the little demon’s. 

Facing them better, Henry said, “He tried to convince me to give him his blueprints and magick books back by telling me a horror story.”

“Oooh,” Boris said as he vaulted over the sofa back to bounce cartoonishly on the cushions. “Was it any good?”

“Better than what Joey usually comes up with.”

Alice circled the couch, smoothing down her dress. “When are you gonna tell him that you’re really close to bringing us all the way to life yourself?”

Henry huffed. “When he’s not grounded, for one,” he said under his breath. 

The toons snickered.

“In all seriousness, though—” Henry glanced over his shoulder to the hidden ritual circle that he’d been meticulously drawing for the past two weeks— “soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if I can finally get you guys off that page by tomorrow night.”

“Yeah?” Bendy asked, perking up.

“Yeah,” Henry said. He smiled down at them. “And then I can welcome you to the real world.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [There's No Escape](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300347) by [Star_Going_Supernova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova)




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